Developing Services for Employed Women: Building on Existing Networks.

Marlow, Christine

The employed woman often finds herself struggling to maintain multiple roles as wife, mother, and worker. Programs serving employed women's needs are a limited commodity in the United States, particularly in rural areas with a relative absence of human services. One approach to program planning in this area is through the examination of the structure of women's natural or informal helping networks. A survey was conducted of 250 female clerical workers in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to study their social support networks. Subjects were 41% Hispanic and 57% Anglo. They had a mean age of 34. Seventy percent lived with their husbands or mates, and 50% had children under the age of 18 at home. When they needed help coping, 76% of married women turned to their husbands; 44% of the total sample turned to family, 55% to friends, 36% to coworkers, 15% to supervisors, and 13% to priests, curanderos, physicians, or counselors. These women would like to turn more to professional counselors, and less to other family, children, and friends, but the discrepancies between actual and desired supports were not large. Anglo and Hispanic women showed few differences in their patterns of use of support persons. The development of formal services for these women must take advantage of existing support systems. This report contains 16 references. (SV)